by Jim Rudnick
Javor had tasted that guard’s whip quite a few times already this week, and for the past three weeks that he’d been a puller, he thought that given all the hate that was building up inside him, he’d love to square off against the man.
About my size but twenty years younger, he thought. Should be enough of a chance for him to live past round one. He grinned and turned away.
In front of him, the rails that the sledge ran on were lying on the solid ramp, flecked and spotted with mud. Beyond them lay only about ten feet of ramp, and then it fell away the seventy or eighty feet down the side of the already built part of the pyramid below him. Over there, some of the other team of pullers were milling about, waiting for the pryers off to his left to do their job.
It was only going to take a minute or so more for them to have the sledge properly positioned for the big pull, and Javor turned to see that Sue was still getting a drink from the water girl. She was thirsty, he thought, and though he’d love to have a couple of mouthfuls of water, it looked like it wouldn’t be at this stop. But Sue finished quickly and urged the water girl to go over to him.
“No time for more water,” the black-haired guard said. “Get ready for the big log pull-up.”
While the pryers were still prying, the water girl seemed to know that he was too early for that, and she skirted around him and danced over to Javor quickly. He’d backed up to stand now right behind the sledge between the rails themselves, and he grinned at her as he did that deep knee bend to squat and receive some water just before the next pull. He closed his eyes and tilted his head backward.
The crack of the whip was loud, and as the black-haired guard laid a big crack on the water girl’s back, she cried out and staggered to her left.
Javor hadn’t seen it happen, but he knew the sound of a whip lash, and the water girl brushed by him on his right as she fled the whip.
It cracked again and caught her squarely on her back, Javor saw. As she bent over to try to flee, the water bag dropped off her shoulder and leaked all over the ramp. She got a couple of more strides in before Javor dove backward towards her, and he caught her just before she went over the side of the ramp to fall down the side of the smooth pyramid.
He scrabbled at her arm. The one he held was wet with spilled water and so small. He was just making good on his grip when the whip cracked again, and he felt it hit him in the face, just above his left eye.
He almost let go of the girl, but he managed to hold on as two more cracks of the same whip caught him once on the chest and once on the arm holding the water girl who hung over the edge of the ramp now.
He gripped the edge of the muddy rail with his right thigh and calf, and he tried to pull her back up and over the edge of the ramp. The black-haired guard strode by him to whip the girl up close now. Javor’s alien knee was straining, but he knew he could count on it to keep him anchored.
He grabbed a handful of the small stone gravel that the ramp was made from, and with an overhand toss, he threw it at the guard who stopped in mid-wind-up of his whip to see where that cloud of gravel had come from—and he turned now to whip Javor.
Javor squeezed with all his might on his right knee, and that pulled him and the girl back off the edge of the ramp. He took another whip blow to his shoulder, but the blood on his face made it difficult to see the guard as it flowed into his eyes. He stood and jumped on his right leg so quickly that all the guard saw was an attacking slave, and the guard stepped back.
And he back-stepped off the edge of the ramp and fell down the side of the pyramid, bouncing every so often on the smooth sides, but the sound of him stopping on the flat stone mezzanine at the pyramid’s base was loud. He didn’t move, Javor noted, as he heard more commotion behind him, and he turned.
Three guards and two Shieldsmen had his cadre of friends held at spear point. They’d been trying to intervene, he figured, and only the bare points of steel had held them back. Wayne and Bruce were lying face down with Shieldsmen holding them down using their spears.
“This is—was—an accident … I saw it, we all saw it—let’s get back to the big pull,” Sue said as she tried to deflect whatever was coming.
And Javor just stood there, quiet now, with a hand across the water girl’s shoulders as she sobbed beside him.
In less than a minute, a whole squad of Shieldsmen appeared running up the ramp, and three moved him back to the edge of the ramp so that one could approach him and put on shackles. He nodded and said, “I will not resist—this really was just an accident.”
Moments later, he was being marched down the ramp past other pullers and teams still moving blocks of stone up the pyramid.. The march toward the base of the pyramid took him past other guards who all catcalled at him and called for his head. They passed by other slaves who looked away from him to avoid any eye contact which might have brought a whipping. Whenever Javor was marched past other Shieldsmen, they stared at him, shock and horror filling their eyes.
At the bottom of the pyramid, they marched him in quick time back to the slave barracks camp, and he thought for a moment that he’d simply be put in his barracks, but they walked him right by. They moved ahead to a solidly fenced location past the slave barracks and turned in to their left.
He could hear dogs barking. He could hear shouts and even once in a while he could hear dogs being praised, if he could follow by ear what he couldn’t see. This was perhaps where the Empire dogs were kept, and he wondered if he’d see Bixby here.
He was marched down a long pathway of grass, between what looked like dog kennels, and then they stopped while one of them went into a trailer off to the side.
Moments later, he was back, and they continued down the rows of kennels until they reached some that were black. The frost wire fencing on the four walls and the ceiling had been painted black and would keep anything inside, inside.
One opened the cage door, and they thrust him inside. He held out his hands to have them remove the shackles, and that got only a grunt from the one at the cage door as he closed it, locked it, and took the key with him.
Javor watched as they all walked away. He looked at his surroundings. The cage of solid frost wire fencing was about ten feet long by five feet wide. A bowl was in the far corner, and he had no idea if that was for water or for his own waste.
He went down to the far side and slid slowly down the fencing until his ass hit the concrete floor. Just behind him was a small three-foot section of dirt too, but the concrete was warm on his legs, and after the strain earlier, the warmth was what he needed.
He massaged his right knee a bit and was glad it had been able to hold both him and the water girl from the edge of the ramp.
He wondered, of course, what might come next, but he also knew that whatever it was going to be, it would not be to his liking…
#####
They came through the fence at the rear of the army base, and all ten took a moment to let their night vision goggles get acclimatized to the few lights ahead on the base’s main road. It had taken almost an hour to cut a huge hole in the fence emptying a complete span between two of the fence posts. Now they had an unfenced expanse that was twenty feet wide.
Behind the base was a large park or field with some piles of what looked like huge old sewer pipes now abandoned. At the far side of the park, another road led east to the major part of town. This was their escape route. They’d all studied the map and knew exactly where to enter the base, and of course, how to get to the enormous Motor Pool building that lay straight ahead about a half a mile in.
The team leader nodded to his number two and said, “Point … all weapons on full silence, and slow but steady … we have all of nineteen more minutes.”
They fanned out into a tactical formation, and they walked gently with as little noise as possible down the road ahead.
Up on the right were the rows of barracks, and they knew that the zombies—smart, dumb, or whatever—slept there. They also knew, after the full day of spyin
g on the base, that there were usually four zombies up ahead guarding the Motor Pool. Two at the doorways and two more up on the roof.
Last night, they had seen that the two on the roof had sat for most of the nighttime hours, nodding off even. But the two on the road just sat on the stack of pallets they’d arranged to block the doorways a bit.
The team trotted ahead and passed the barracks quietly, awakening no one. As the team approached the two guards again still sitting on those pallets, it took them a moment to realize they were being attacked—bitten zombies, the leader noted.
He snapped his fingers and from the team members beside him, the two guards dropped as they were still trying to get up, killed by the silenced rifle fire. One of them had almost gotten his gun up to aim at them, and it clattered to the pavement as he dropped back on the pallets underneath him.
Up on the roof a voice called out. “Raphael, what the heck you doing?”
The team leader held up a hand to freeze his team. They waited.
Moments later, a head popped over the side of the roof up about three stories, and a silent bullet took him out.
That left one, they all knew.
The team split up with five of them going into the Motor Pool building to start up five trucks.
From above, the zombie opened fire, and one of the remaining team members down on the road cried out. He was not hit, but he yelped like he had been. Beside him, a team member shot the zombie who’d looked over the edge just a bit, and the body fell off the roof.
“We’re live,” the team leader yelled, as behind them down the road, they could hear screen doors opening and then slamming closed.
The remaining five of them piled into the building and ran the rows looking for trucks with open doors. The earlier five team members had simply found keys and tried the trucks. If they started, they left them running with the door open.
“We’ve got nine so far,” a voice called out from the rows ahead, and in a moment, it was added to by a new voice that yelled out, “Ten … we’ve got ten.”
The team leader moved to a close truck with the door wide open and got up and into the driver’s seat. He revved the engine and then led the way out of the row he was in, turning sharply to the left and then bearing down on the doorway.
In the doorway, however, were zombies—many zombies—but it didn’t matter. He floored the truck. It was an army personnel carrier truck, about twenty-five feet long with a huge tarp over the back end that would usually hold troops. “Today, it is a doorway clearing truck,” he said to himself as he plowed right into the zombies dead ahead. He noted for later reports that they were of the bitten type—they all had some kind of weapon but not a lot of rifles. One was standing on the far sidewalk as more were running down the road toward the building, and he was aiming at the team leader’s truck.
The team leader didn’t turn but went right across the road and mowed him down as two bullets hit his truck. He tossed out a frag grenade that went off with a big bang, and zombies toppled behind him.
“One down. A ton to go,” he said to himself, and he swung to the right toward the barracks and lined up more zombies. He floored the truck and mowed down as many as he could. Behind him, another truck and then a third truck came out of the Motor Pool building and turned to the right to follow his truck.
Ahead, on one of the walkways to the fifth barracks building, he could see a pair of zombies lying on the grass pointing at his lead truck with rifles. He climbed back up off the road, went around a couple of sapling trees in the way, and aimed the truck at them.
He tossed another frag grenade out the passenger side window, and it went off well behind his truck, but he could hear cries behind too. “Good but now those two …”
One bullet came through the windshield, and it made a clean hole as it passed right through the cab and then the large tarped area behind him. He leaned on the horn, and the noise made many of the other zombie heads turn. In his rear-view side mirror, he could see more and more trucks coming out of the Motor Pool building. As he looked back ahead, those two zombies were now getting up quickly.
Quicker, he thought, than even bitten zombies could—these are smart zombies and that is news.
He aimed at the one who split off to the left closer to the barracks building and rode him down, the body banging first on the bumper, and then he made sure to run at least one tire over his enemy.
Behind him now as he was coming up on the hole in the fences they’d cut earlier, the ten trucks were all hauling toward their escape hatch.
He mounted the curb once more and plowed right over a small sapling in his way and out the cut in the fence. Then he angled over to his right toward the first pile of big concrete sewer pipes.
He was out of danger was his first thought, when from the pile of pipes came a fusillade of bullets. Some just hit the truck, but some also hit the cab. He took two shells, one in the right arm and another in the left shoulder.
Makes steering hard, he thought, as he leaned on the horn to play a warning—one short, one long, one short, one long—and he drove on. He tossed out an incendiary grenade to hit the pipes, and in moments, a gigantic wall of flame reached up to the sky.
Behind him, the rest of the trucks went by the same first pile of sewer pipes, now on fire. Two of the trucks slowed and came to rest as their drivers were hit and killed. One more somehow exploded, the engine flaming up with a huge swath of fire. One truck hit the sewer pipes full tilt, the body of its driver slumped over the steering wheel. That knocked over one end of the now burning pipes and a few dropped down to roll on the ground, effectively stopping the hail of gunfire.
The remaining trucks all made the far end of the field and then turned to the right to take the road to the downtown area. At a corner ahead, the team leader stopped in the lead and got out of his truck to take stock of what had happened. He walked and talked to the remaining six drivers, and then at the end of the line, he looked back over the field in the distance.
A huge pile of flaming sewer pipes and a burning truck was all he could make out, and using his night vision goggles was out as the flames made them unusable.
He nodded. Smart zombies controlled the base. Yes, they’d sent bitten zombies to attack them at the Motor Pool, but they’d also known that there had to be another way out of the base. The main gates were closed and locked, and three trucks barricaded the only road in.
He knew it had to be smart zombies because dumb zombies would never have searched for their exit and sent snipers to lay in wait for them. The zombie snipers had gone through the fence hole the team had created and had used the sewer pipes for ambush cover while they waited for the trucks.
“Smart,” he said to himself as one of the team squeezed his shoulder wound to pour in an antiseptic cream and slap a field dressing on it just like he’d just done for his right arm.
“Gotta go,” he said to them all, and they started up the trucks and aimed at the town center to turn south to get up on the interstate and head back to Arlington, though there would be some side trips on regional roads too.
Six … not as good as ten … team members … not the trucks …
CHAPTER EIGHT
He had lain on the dirt corner of his kennel now for three full days. Once a day someone brought water and poured some into the bowl that lay on the concrete floor beside him. Since the sun was so bright and hot, the concrete heated up too much, and the dirt was the coolest spot to sit for hours. At least, he said to himself, the dirt is cooler.
They never brought him food. “No kibble even,” he said to himself, as if such an item could even be called human food, but he knew he’d have wolfed it down none the less.
He sat in the sharp sunlight of full summer all day long—there was no shade anywhere in the kennel areas. He watched other dogs walking their pens, back and forth, over and over, and he wondered about humans and their need to cage animals. He got up every hour or so to stretch and flex his right knee, and it quickly h
ealed from the stress of saving the water girl. The alien tissue that had replaced his some twenty-plus years ago had helped him before and helped him again.
He grinned. He wished that he could have had both knees and even arm joint replacements when he’d been a decathlon champion back then. Instead of doing a long jump of only forty feet like I could on my own human muscles, wonder what kind of distance I might have been able to get then?
Fifty?
Sixty maybe?
He shook his head. Days gone by, he thought, and he turned at the very front of his kennel fence to walk the five strides back. He did his ten laps and then sat again for another hour and waited.
After the third day, he had had it with trying to stay anything else but frustrated and upset. He wondered about the guard and if he was dead. He wondered about the little water girl and what they’d done about her. He wondered about his team and what they might be going through as punishment.
He wondered, then closed his eyes for his morning nap time, and slowly faded out …
Bang!
A huge noise that shook the whole frost wired cage on all four sides awoke him, and he leaned forward, shaking his head to see what it was. At the end of the kennel cage stood four Shieldsmen and a robed disciple. He motioned for Javor to come over and so he did.
“We need to take you to see the prime disciple,” he said, and he opened the kennel cage door slowly.
“But know this—you will die by spear if you try to do anything other than come along calmly,” he said, and while his voice was calm, Javor could hear the steel inside same.
He half-smiled and followed the lead Shieldsman back along the walkway to the street, ignoring the barking dogs and the few dog handlers who moved out of their way.
Maybe Bixby is here. He looked at every single dog he could and saw not a one looked right. Hope the pup’s okay.